Dennis: Like his kick, Andersen nails keynote speech

I was 13 years old when Morten Andersen gave me one of the best sports memories of my life.

“The Kick,” as it’s known in Atlanta Falcons history, came off Andersen’s foot and sailed through the middle of the uprights to send the Falcons to the 1999 Super Bowl.

Watching with my dad and a fellow teacher pal of his, I ran circles through the house with tears streaming down my face, oftentimes mimicking a Deion Sanders high-step celebration.

Needless to say, when Loran Smith invited me to see Andersen speak at the University of Georgia Chapter of the National Football Foundation on Monday, I was more than thrilled.

But after the awards presentation was over and Andersen told us the story of how he became one of just 310 people (he broke that down to 0.06 percent of those all time who have played) in the NFL Hall of Fame, Loran arranged for me to sit down and speak to Andersen for this column.

What do I ask? Do I pull out my recorder? Do I jot down notes?

I decided on small talk.

With that came out the 13-year-old boy high stepping through our friends’ house.

I told him how everyone I spoke with really enjoyed his speech, one that told the story of him coming from Denmark as a high-school foreign exchange student.

His story included his first kicking tryout with an Indiana high school and how, coming from a soccer background with no knowledge of American football, he didn’t know what was going on.

As Andersen described it, a kid knelt down in front of him with a tee, a group of large guys with “their derrières up in the air” lined up in front of him, and soon a ball was flung back to the kid kneeling on the ground.

The coach looked at him and told him to kick the crap out of it. So he did. It was the beginning of a long and successful career that made the left-footed kicker the NFL’s all-time leading scorer after a 25-year career.

But I couldn’t focus much more on that, I had to ask about “The Kick.”

Andersen said he reacted much in the way I did.

“I knew it was good,” he told me. “I didn’t even watch it go through, I just took off running.”

And after 20 years, I had to tell him that he uttered a phrase that Dad and I still use to this day.

On the podium that night in 1999, Andersen was asked about the kick.

His quote: “I hit it pure.”

Dad and I use that term every time we do something perfect.

A 3-point shot that found nothing but net during H.O.R.S.E. in the driveway: “I shot that one pure.”

How’d I do on that college test today? “I hit it pure.”

I had to ask Morten if he remembered saying it.

He didn’t.

But when I told him what the saying had become around the Dennis house he gave a good laugh and said, with pride that he had coined a phrase, “It’s an Andersen!”

He sat beside me in Athens Country Club and donned the gold Hall of Fame jacket that he had worn the entire night.

I wanted to touch it, but I didn’t.

I thought about his speech and what I could use for questioning.

He had talked about how hard he worked to come back to the Falcons. In 2004, at age 44, it seemed he was given up on by everyone. Out of a job, he worked four days a week for 20 months on a youth football field, only to get a call in 2006 from the Falcons to come to a tryout with several other kickers, most of them just out of college.

He nailed 14 of 15 kicks down the center, the 15th just a hair off of center.

“I turned around and asked: any questions?” Andersen said of his tryout. “Joe DeCamillis, the Falcons special teams coach, said, ‘yeah, blue or black ink?’”

At the end of my few minutes with Andersen, I told him that my biggest takeaway from his speech was how it ended.

“It is about being grateful, thankful, and kind to others,” said Andersen, who still lives near the Falcons’ complex in Flowery Branch. “If there’s one thing you know in the south it’s how to be kind.”

As I shook his hand, I thanked him for being kind to me and that it will be something I’ll always take away from his speech.

Before I left, however, I asked him how his golf outing went at the country club earlier in the day.

“The cold and wind was brutal, man,” he said. “But I hit some good shots.”

I sure was hoping he’d say that he hit it pure.

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